[fiction] Life & Times
And just when you thought you were safe....Life & Times returns. Complete with a cast.
Or, I'm hopped up on enough caffeine and pain pills to actually post this bit of crack. XD.
Also, special guest stars courtesy of L.J. Smith. And my own warped imagination. Rated R for innuendo and language.
Jared really hated the fact that he was obviously part Brownie. It made him want to clean, and that was really horrible. Especially when his mother had left for the weekend on some stupid librarian’s retreat or something. Because everyone knew that when your parents left for the weekend that meant you were supposed to throw so wild a party that the neighbours called the police on you. You weren’t supposed to clean the closets.
Although, he reflected, the closets really needed to be cleaned. It was disgusting how much junk seemed to collect in them. Junk he had never seen, and he doubted his mother even remembered. She was as bad as a dragon, actually, and that gave him pause to consider: maybe his mother was a dragon? It would explain so much - the fact he didn’t have a father, her uncanny ability to know when he was using magic - it all made sense!
But no, his mother wasn’t a dragon. After all, Jared had met his grandparents.
Sighing, he pulled another piece of junk from the topmost shelf.
It was this long thin piece of god-knew-what, and for a moment (a blessedly short moment) Jared wondered if it were a dildo. Which made his mind go places about his mother and sex that he would have never, ever considered had it not been for Jake’s disgusting comments a few weeks prior.
But after a moment of sheer panic, he realized it wasn’t a dildo. It was a runestave. The stave of life, some called it, and it had to do with the Shadow Man and random other assorted German boogymen that Jared had never actually met. His uncle Blaine had, but then Blaine was prone to embellishing his worthless life when drunk. But perhaps this time Blaine had been telling the truth.
“Huh,” Jared said, not even realizing he was speaking aloud as he looked at the way the runes were shifting and coiling about the dildo - er, runestave.
There was a deep gouge in one side, as if someone had just sliced off a part of it, and Jared wondered about that. He traced his fingers along the grove. Cutting out a Name of Power was one of the sure-fire ways to bring the wrath of something down on you, and Jared wondered if this was why the runestave had been hidden in the closet.
He chewed his lip. Well, maybe he could just put it back in the closet -
It was at that moment that lightening struck.
Now, Jared wasn’t superstitious, not exactly, but he knew as well as any other immortal being that could control the weather, that making lightening flash was a wonderful way of getting peoples’ attention. And so he decided discretion was the better part of valour in this case and decided that cleaning could wait another hour or so.
So he went into the (now sparkling clean) kitchen and began to look around for the paring knife. He also began to wonder if he should have some backup. The phone seemed to be calling to him, and even though he wasn’t allowed to have people over when his mom was gone, she never said anything about emergency situations.
“Hey, Mrs. Williams,” he said, easily enough, when Sarah’s stepmother picked it up on the third ring. “Is Sarah there?”
“Jared,” Karen said, real pleasure in her voice. “Wait a minute, dear.” She didn’t bother covering the receiver as she yelled. “Sarah! Jared’s on the phone!”
Sarah picked up almost immediately. “Is this very important?” she asked, sounding breathless. “Because I’ve got drama club tryouts on Monday and - “
“Sarah!” Karen said, “How rude!”
“Actually,” Jared said, feeling somewhat defeated and not exactly wanting to get into the middle of what sounded like it was going to be the Karen and Sarah battle to end all battles. “It isn’t. I just found something weird in the closet, and I thought you might know what it is.”
Jared reflected on what he just said. It sounded even crazier than finding the stave of life. And quite possibly would make Karen call up his mother and ask if Jared had a history of drinking cough syrup and sniffing glue when he was home alone.
“Umm…” Sarah said. “This isn’t some weird coming out call, is it? Because maybe Adam’s more equipped to deal…?”
“Are you feeling all right?” was Karen’s only comment.
Jared wanted to bang his head against the kitchen table for his stupidity. “Um…I’m fine,” he said. “Totally peachy. Awesome in fact.”
And then he hung up the phone.
Okay, that was really, really dumb as dumb things went.
But maybe the Labyrinth would have some answers….
***
Twenty minutes later, Jared realized that the Old Man with the Bird on His Head was a complete waste of space and even threatening the old fool with the Bog of Eternal Stench wasn’t going to make him speak coherently. Also, he had to get home fast before he got the urge to clean the Labyrinth. And that would require touching things. Ewww. There were very good reasons Goblin Kings wore gloves.
“Umm…thanks,” Jared said, dropping all the spare change form his pocket (all nine cents worth) into the alms’ cup, hoping to stem the rambling conversation. He beat a hasty retreat back to his kitchen and lamented - once again - that if he had to be the ruler of the Labyrinth, why couldn’t the Labyrinth have anyone remotely useful living in it.
It was at that moment that his doorbell rang.
It was Sarah, and as it was raining, he figured his mother wouldn’t mind too much that he let someone into the house while she was gone.
She had a large Barnes & Nobles shopping bag with her. “So,” she said, “I was thinking I was quite insensitive about you coming out. So I stopped at the bookstore, and I figured - what the hell - consider this your early birthday present!” And with that, she shoved the bag into his hands.
“Dude,” Jared said. “I’m not gay, okay?”
“Jared,” Sarah said, her eyes large and understanding. “It’s all right - “
“No,” Jared shouted. “It’s not all right! I found a stave of life in the front hall closet, and I called you up because you’re the only person I know who knows that I’m not human, and I thought - given your love of magic and all - that you’d be up for it!
“But you for some reason decided that I was having a sexual identity crisis! God, y’know, and I thought the Labyrinth creatures were batshit insane! I had no idea it was my friends, too!”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “You’re not gay. Jeezus. You could’ve just said so over the phone.”
Jared ground his teeth.
Lightening flashed, but he was pretty sure it as him, this time.
“So,” Sarah continued brightly. “Stave of life?”
A few hours later - with the help of the Internet and a call to Jared’s uncle Blaine - they now knew even less about the runestave than they had before.
Blaine had been deep in his cups (“Ah, Summer Island mead! Such a glorious thing, Jareth! You can’t imagine the girls here, all in need of a man - “), but eventually Jared had managed to get out of him (as well as several stories not fit for polite company about the Avalon priestesses) that yes it was his runestave, and that Maggie had been a good girl to keep it for him all these years.
And then Blaine had to go because there was going to be mud wrestling. Naked, girl-on-girl mud wrestling.
“Well,” Sarah said after that phone conversation was finished. “I shall never be able to look at Arthurian legend the same way again.”
Jared buried his face in his hands. “Why are they always my relatives?” he asked. “Why?”
The Internet had proven to be less than helpful, too, as googling “stave of life” came up with far too many porn sites and not enough with the “ancient Shadow Man artifact” sites.
Although - and this was the weird thing - there was some message board run by one Jenny Thornton about the Others that had a picture of what looked to be the runestave that was, at present sitting innocently on the kitchen table. If one was a particularly bad drawer and was about the age of seven. (“Huh,” Sarah said. “Y’know, Karen’s half-sister has a daughter named that.”)
In the end, though, it was just the two of them, the stave of life, and the paring knife.
“I’m not so sure a paring knife is the way to go with this,” Sarah said.
“This isn’t just any paring knife,” Jared said. “It’s made of mithril.”
“Like Lord of the Rings mithril?”
“Well,” Jared said, “Tolkien kinda embellished but…yeah.”
“So why’s it in your kitchen?”
“Hogwart. And Mom likes it because it makes cutting cold butter really easy.”
“It’s Hoggle,” Sarah corrected. “Wait, why did Hoggle have it?”
“Dwarf, Sarah. Dwarf.”
Then there was the argument over who would have their finger pricked.
“You’re human,” Jared said. “Runes always work better with human blood.”
“You’re fae,” Sarah protested. “You’ve got magic in your blood. Don’t you think that’d be better?”
“Human blood. It’s traditional.”
“And you’re like the guy,” Sarah continued. “You’re supposed to do all the nasty, icky things.”
“Sexist much?”
“You’re the one going on about being all traditional - “
“Children, children.” Someone took the knife out of Jared’s hand. “I’ll do it.”
Sarah screamed, and even Jared stiffened. And he had recognized the voice.
Blaine Fitzjames was something of the black sheep in the Royal Family of the Labyrinth and the Surrounding Goblin Lands. If he wasn’t whoring, he was gambling, and if he wasn’t gambling, he was drinking. And if he wasn’t drinking, he was back to whoring. Or a combination thereof.
“I thought you were in Avalon,” Jared said. “With the mud wrestling.”
“Ah,” Blaine said, “but then I got to thinking, what would my nephew and his girl be up to so very late at night with the runestave?”
He picked up the Stave of Life and looked at it. Leered at Sarah “Long, isn’t it?”
Oh, God, Jared thought. It was a dildo after all!
One of the half-clad women with him (Jared assumed she was an Avalon priestess) cooed, “Not as long as you, darling,” and Jared wanted to vomit. He shot a look at Sarah, and teenage solidarity had evidently overcome their former battle of the sexes because she had her forefinger down her throat and an expression that clearly said gag me.
“I won this in a game of strip poker,” Blaine was drunkenly reminiscing. “Bloke was quite an ugly fellow, as I recall. Called himself something stupid. Anyway, I sent it to your mother because I thought this might do wonders about her Ice Queen routine, but I see that it hasn’t. Ah, such a shame, woman as fine as that and - ”
“Don’t make me wish you away, Uncle Blaine,” Jared warned.
Blaine coughed. “Well, anyway, I suppose you want to write the name back in?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Bad bit of business, Jareth, to get involved with the Shadow Men.”
“Are you going to help or not?” Sarah asked, suddenly standing up and standing her ground against Blaine. “Because you said you were going to do it, and now you’re just acting like a coward!”
Blaine puffed up. “I’m no coward, girl!” he slurred. “I’m Blaine Fitzjames, High Prince of the Fae.”
“Sure, sure,” Sarah said, looking at her nails. “You say so, but all I’ve heard about you is how you annoy Ms. Turner for rent money.”
Blaine growled and pricked his finger with the paring knife. Used the blood to write some complicated runic symbols that Jared couldn’t follow.
And the lights went out.
The Avalon priestesses started screaming, and Jared felt each and every hair on his body stand on end, like the time in fourth grade he had stuck a fork into the electrical socket on a dare from Adam.
“Jared…” Sarah whispered.
And then the lights were back on and there was a boy who looked to be about his age, sitting on the floor and clutching at his head. He was speaking what sounded vaguely like German. If you lived in the eighteenth-century or were Amish or something.
The Avalon girls were staring as if they had - collectively - lost their hearts, and Blaine was staring bemusedly at the runestave.
The air was thick with magic, ancient, ancient magic, and so Jared did the only thing he could think of. “Hi,” he said to the boy on the floor. He extended his hand. “I’m Jared...er...Jareth Fitzwilliam. This here’s my uncle, Blaine Fitzjames, High Prince of the Fae, and his…entourage of Avalon Priestesses.”
He gestured at Sarah. “And this is Sarah Williams…uh…Defeater of the Labyrinth.”
The boy took his hand and pulled himself up. “The Labyrinth,” he said, English falling slowly from his tongue, as if it were something he had learned long ago and almost forgotten. “I’ve heard of it. A construct, is it not? Its rulers bound with a geas to help those in need?”
“Yes,” Jared agreed. “It is.”
The boy laughed. “You must forgive me. We Shadow Men are often drawn to games.”
Jared wasn’t sure he liked the laugh, a bit too tinged with darkness for his taste.
Blaine went down on one knee, evidently shocked sober. “Erlking,” he said, head bowed.
Jared gulped. The Erlking was one of the darkest tales told on the darkest of nights. All about the evil black elves and their love of human prey.
His mother was going to kill him.
The boy grinned, showing all of his white teeth. “Call me Julian.”
Or, I'm hopped up on enough caffeine and pain pills to actually post this bit of crack. XD.
Also, special guest stars courtesy of L.J. Smith. And my own warped imagination. Rated R for innuendo and language.
Jared really hated the fact that he was obviously part Brownie. It made him want to clean, and that was really horrible. Especially when his mother had left for the weekend on some stupid librarian’s retreat or something. Because everyone knew that when your parents left for the weekend that meant you were supposed to throw so wild a party that the neighbours called the police on you. You weren’t supposed to clean the closets.
Although, he reflected, the closets really needed to be cleaned. It was disgusting how much junk seemed to collect in them. Junk he had never seen, and he doubted his mother even remembered. She was as bad as a dragon, actually, and that gave him pause to consider: maybe his mother was a dragon? It would explain so much - the fact he didn’t have a father, her uncanny ability to know when he was using magic - it all made sense!
But no, his mother wasn’t a dragon. After all, Jared had met his grandparents.
Sighing, he pulled another piece of junk from the topmost shelf.
It was this long thin piece of god-knew-what, and for a moment (a blessedly short moment) Jared wondered if it were a dildo. Which made his mind go places about his mother and sex that he would have never, ever considered had it not been for Jake’s disgusting comments a few weeks prior.
But after a moment of sheer panic, he realized it wasn’t a dildo. It was a runestave. The stave of life, some called it, and it had to do with the Shadow Man and random other assorted German boogymen that Jared had never actually met. His uncle Blaine had, but then Blaine was prone to embellishing his worthless life when drunk. But perhaps this time Blaine had been telling the truth.
“Huh,” Jared said, not even realizing he was speaking aloud as he looked at the way the runes were shifting and coiling about the dildo - er, runestave.
There was a deep gouge in one side, as if someone had just sliced off a part of it, and Jared wondered about that. He traced his fingers along the grove. Cutting out a Name of Power was one of the sure-fire ways to bring the wrath of something down on you, and Jared wondered if this was why the runestave had been hidden in the closet.
He chewed his lip. Well, maybe he could just put it back in the closet -
It was at that moment that lightening struck.
Now, Jared wasn’t superstitious, not exactly, but he knew as well as any other immortal being that could control the weather, that making lightening flash was a wonderful way of getting peoples’ attention. And so he decided discretion was the better part of valour in this case and decided that cleaning could wait another hour or so.
So he went into the (now sparkling clean) kitchen and began to look around for the paring knife. He also began to wonder if he should have some backup. The phone seemed to be calling to him, and even though he wasn’t allowed to have people over when his mom was gone, she never said anything about emergency situations.
“Hey, Mrs. Williams,” he said, easily enough, when Sarah’s stepmother picked it up on the third ring. “Is Sarah there?”
“Jared,” Karen said, real pleasure in her voice. “Wait a minute, dear.” She didn’t bother covering the receiver as she yelled. “Sarah! Jared’s on the phone!”
Sarah picked up almost immediately. “Is this very important?” she asked, sounding breathless. “Because I’ve got drama club tryouts on Monday and - “
“Sarah!” Karen said, “How rude!”
“Actually,” Jared said, feeling somewhat defeated and not exactly wanting to get into the middle of what sounded like it was going to be the Karen and Sarah battle to end all battles. “It isn’t. I just found something weird in the closet, and I thought you might know what it is.”
Jared reflected on what he just said. It sounded even crazier than finding the stave of life. And quite possibly would make Karen call up his mother and ask if Jared had a history of drinking cough syrup and sniffing glue when he was home alone.
“Umm…” Sarah said. “This isn’t some weird coming out call, is it? Because maybe Adam’s more equipped to deal…?”
“Are you feeling all right?” was Karen’s only comment.
Jared wanted to bang his head against the kitchen table for his stupidity. “Um…I’m fine,” he said. “Totally peachy. Awesome in fact.”
And then he hung up the phone.
Okay, that was really, really dumb as dumb things went.
But maybe the Labyrinth would have some answers….
***
Twenty minutes later, Jared realized that the Old Man with the Bird on His Head was a complete waste of space and even threatening the old fool with the Bog of Eternal Stench wasn’t going to make him speak coherently. Also, he had to get home fast before he got the urge to clean the Labyrinth. And that would require touching things. Ewww. There were very good reasons Goblin Kings wore gloves.
“Umm…thanks,” Jared said, dropping all the spare change form his pocket (all nine cents worth) into the alms’ cup, hoping to stem the rambling conversation. He beat a hasty retreat back to his kitchen and lamented - once again - that if he had to be the ruler of the Labyrinth, why couldn’t the Labyrinth have anyone remotely useful living in it.
It was at that moment that his doorbell rang.
It was Sarah, and as it was raining, he figured his mother wouldn’t mind too much that he let someone into the house while she was gone.
She had a large Barnes & Nobles shopping bag with her. “So,” she said, “I was thinking I was quite insensitive about you coming out. So I stopped at the bookstore, and I figured - what the hell - consider this your early birthday present!” And with that, she shoved the bag into his hands.
“Dude,” Jared said. “I’m not gay, okay?”
“Jared,” Sarah said, her eyes large and understanding. “It’s all right - “
“No,” Jared shouted. “It’s not all right! I found a stave of life in the front hall closet, and I called you up because you’re the only person I know who knows that I’m not human, and I thought - given your love of magic and all - that you’d be up for it!
“But you for some reason decided that I was having a sexual identity crisis! God, y’know, and I thought the Labyrinth creatures were batshit insane! I had no idea it was my friends, too!”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “You’re not gay. Jeezus. You could’ve just said so over the phone.”
Jared ground his teeth.
Lightening flashed, but he was pretty sure it as him, this time.
“So,” Sarah continued brightly. “Stave of life?”
A few hours later - with the help of the Internet and a call to Jared’s uncle Blaine - they now knew even less about the runestave than they had before.
Blaine had been deep in his cups (“Ah, Summer Island mead! Such a glorious thing, Jareth! You can’t imagine the girls here, all in need of a man - “), but eventually Jared had managed to get out of him (as well as several stories not fit for polite company about the Avalon priestesses) that yes it was his runestave, and that Maggie had been a good girl to keep it for him all these years.
And then Blaine had to go because there was going to be mud wrestling. Naked, girl-on-girl mud wrestling.
“Well,” Sarah said after that phone conversation was finished. “I shall never be able to look at Arthurian legend the same way again.”
Jared buried his face in his hands. “Why are they always my relatives?” he asked. “Why?”
The Internet had proven to be less than helpful, too, as googling “stave of life” came up with far too many porn sites and not enough with the “ancient Shadow Man artifact” sites.
Although - and this was the weird thing - there was some message board run by one Jenny Thornton about the Others that had a picture of what looked to be the runestave that was, at present sitting innocently on the kitchen table. If one was a particularly bad drawer and was about the age of seven. (“Huh,” Sarah said. “Y’know, Karen’s half-sister has a daughter named that.”)
In the end, though, it was just the two of them, the stave of life, and the paring knife.
“I’m not so sure a paring knife is the way to go with this,” Sarah said.
“This isn’t just any paring knife,” Jared said. “It’s made of mithril.”
“Like Lord of the Rings mithril?”
“Well,” Jared said, “Tolkien kinda embellished but…yeah.”
“So why’s it in your kitchen?”
“Hogwart. And Mom likes it because it makes cutting cold butter really easy.”
“It’s Hoggle,” Sarah corrected. “Wait, why did Hoggle have it?”
“Dwarf, Sarah. Dwarf.”
Then there was the argument over who would have their finger pricked.
“You’re human,” Jared said. “Runes always work better with human blood.”
“You’re fae,” Sarah protested. “You’ve got magic in your blood. Don’t you think that’d be better?”
“Human blood. It’s traditional.”
“And you’re like the guy,” Sarah continued. “You’re supposed to do all the nasty, icky things.”
“Sexist much?”
“You’re the one going on about being all traditional - “
“Children, children.” Someone took the knife out of Jared’s hand. “I’ll do it.”
Sarah screamed, and even Jared stiffened. And he had recognized the voice.
Blaine Fitzjames was something of the black sheep in the Royal Family of the Labyrinth and the Surrounding Goblin Lands. If he wasn’t whoring, he was gambling, and if he wasn’t gambling, he was drinking. And if he wasn’t drinking, he was back to whoring. Or a combination thereof.
“I thought you were in Avalon,” Jared said. “With the mud wrestling.”
“Ah,” Blaine said, “but then I got to thinking, what would my nephew and his girl be up to so very late at night with the runestave?”
He picked up the Stave of Life and looked at it. Leered at Sarah “Long, isn’t it?”
Oh, God, Jared thought. It was a dildo after all!
One of the half-clad women with him (Jared assumed she was an Avalon priestess) cooed, “Not as long as you, darling,” and Jared wanted to vomit. He shot a look at Sarah, and teenage solidarity had evidently overcome their former battle of the sexes because she had her forefinger down her throat and an expression that clearly said gag me.
“I won this in a game of strip poker,” Blaine was drunkenly reminiscing. “Bloke was quite an ugly fellow, as I recall. Called himself something stupid. Anyway, I sent it to your mother because I thought this might do wonders about her Ice Queen routine, but I see that it hasn’t. Ah, such a shame, woman as fine as that and - ”
“Don’t make me wish you away, Uncle Blaine,” Jared warned.
Blaine coughed. “Well, anyway, I suppose you want to write the name back in?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Bad bit of business, Jareth, to get involved with the Shadow Men.”
“Are you going to help or not?” Sarah asked, suddenly standing up and standing her ground against Blaine. “Because you said you were going to do it, and now you’re just acting like a coward!”
Blaine puffed up. “I’m no coward, girl!” he slurred. “I’m Blaine Fitzjames, High Prince of the Fae.”
“Sure, sure,” Sarah said, looking at her nails. “You say so, but all I’ve heard about you is how you annoy Ms. Turner for rent money.”
Blaine growled and pricked his finger with the paring knife. Used the blood to write some complicated runic symbols that Jared couldn’t follow.
And the lights went out.
The Avalon priestesses started screaming, and Jared felt each and every hair on his body stand on end, like the time in fourth grade he had stuck a fork into the electrical socket on a dare from Adam.
“Jared…” Sarah whispered.
And then the lights were back on and there was a boy who looked to be about his age, sitting on the floor and clutching at his head. He was speaking what sounded vaguely like German. If you lived in the eighteenth-century or were Amish or something.
The Avalon girls were staring as if they had - collectively - lost their hearts, and Blaine was staring bemusedly at the runestave.
The air was thick with magic, ancient, ancient magic, and so Jared did the only thing he could think of. “Hi,” he said to the boy on the floor. He extended his hand. “I’m Jared...er...Jareth Fitzwilliam. This here’s my uncle, Blaine Fitzjames, High Prince of the Fae, and his…entourage of Avalon Priestesses.”
He gestured at Sarah. “And this is Sarah Williams…uh…Defeater of the Labyrinth.”
The boy took his hand and pulled himself up. “The Labyrinth,” he said, English falling slowly from his tongue, as if it were something he had learned long ago and almost forgotten. “I’ve heard of it. A construct, is it not? Its rulers bound with a geas to help those in need?”
“Yes,” Jared agreed. “It is.”
The boy laughed. “You must forgive me. We Shadow Men are often drawn to games.”
Jared wasn’t sure he liked the laugh, a bit too tinged with darkness for his taste.
Blaine went down on one knee, evidently shocked sober. “Erlking,” he said, head bowed.
Jared gulped. The Erlking was one of the darkest tales told on the darkest of nights. All about the evil black elves and their love of human prey.
His mother was going to kill him.
The boy grinned, showing all of his white teeth. “Call me Julian.”